


What-ifs: Harry Potter

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2019-10-19 17:07:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17605427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: Unrelated what-ifs from various points in the series.First up: Umbridge doesn't last a week.Chapter 2: What if we got to see more school customs than going to Quidditch?





	1. Alternate

The Weasley twins were usually two to give the benefit of the doubt.  They certainly knew the hardships of being misunderstood -- case in point: their mother's complete inability to see the utter genius and marketability of their goods -- and let's be honest, sometimes the sheer stupidity of the biases had to be pointed out loudly and with great drama -- case in point: Harry Potter, Heir of Slytherin, all of twelve years old and more hair than boy -- but.  Well.  
  
Actually, showing up to Defense without a plot to throw the professor to the Aurors on day one was, by now, "giving the benefit of the doubt".  Maybe the professor wouldn't be a homicidal lunatic!  Or, if they had to be one, would politely keep it to one-or-three nights of the month.  Actual competence optional.  
  
Fred and George missed Professor Lupin _so much_.  
  
("Maybe we'll be ripping the book apart for how wrong and stupid it is this year," George said while hiding from a swarm of mutated doxies in Grimmauld Place, about a week before term.  
  
"Right," Fred said, before shoving his twin over onto the dusty floor and pulling their secret emergency medical trunk off its necklace chain.  "How many doxies bit you?"  
  
"Tangerine?")  
  
Five minutes into Umbridge's class, Fred caught George's eye.  
  
Benefit time was over.  
  
"So."  George tapped three times at a knot in a particular door frame as he walked through it, at the tail end of their class.  Their class disappeared; George stepped out onto the seventh floor instead of the third, with Fred hot on his heels.  "We'll all go mad in a week."  
  
"Can't wait a year for the curse to take," Fred agreed.  "Granger will snap."  
  
George felt a bit of blood drain from his face.  "Much as I'd like to see her burn the book--"  
  
"She'd kill the entire tower first."  
  
"Kill the tower, burn all the Defense books, then herself."  George could see it all too easily.  Granger gone completely around the twist, screeching with mad laughter as she stood on a pile of books and blew the entire thing up.  It wasn't actually something that would happen, but who knew.  People got very, very weird in their OWL year as it was.  "Any thoughts, oh second-most-brilliant of Junior Marauders?"  
  
"Don't talk to yourself, Forge, you don't want people knowing how badly off your rocker you are."  But Fred rocked back on his heels thoughtfully.  "Marauders."  
  
Marauders.  There was an idea in that somewhere...  
  
"... We just need a really good teacher..." George mused.  And a better book, but a good teacher would change the book anyway.  
  
"... but no one needs to know who the teacher actually is," Fred finished slowly, with dawning glee.  
  
Oh.  _Oh_.  Of _course_.  "Why should--"  
  
"--the bad guys--"  
  
"--be the only ones--"  
  
"--who get to use Polyjuice?" they chorused.  
  
"We need to Floo Lupin," Fred said.  
  
"And get Umbridge out of the way," George added.  
  
"Secret-like."  
  
"I don't know of any trunks to spare."  
  
"And we don't have secret cells in the secret passages."  
  
They fell silent for a moment, brows furrowed, thinking.  No secret compartments, no secret cells, they probably -- definitely -- couldn't afford to feed a prisoner without the elves telling Dumbledore and getting them caught...  
  
Their eyes met.  They grinned in bright mirror image.  " _Draught of Living Death_."  
  
They were almost halfway to the nearest Floo (a long-forgotten fireplace in the unbarred side of Ghoul Studies' abandoned book cage) when Fred asked, "Does Living Death have side effects with Polyjuice?"  
  
George shrugged.  "Guess we'll find out."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Lupin stared at them, aghast, for a long moment out of the Floo.  Then, slowly, he dropped his face into one hand.  "Two conditions," he said tiredly.  Which, the full moon wasn't for another week, so it was clearly mock-exhaustion.  Mr. Moony made a show of doing the same thing constantly on the Map.  
  
"We'd say 'anything'," Fred said.  
  
"But we know the Map's Moony," George finished.  
  
"Go on," they chorused.  
  
Lupin sighed, dropped his hand to look directly at them, and raised a finger.  "One," he said.  "You have to learn Animagery so you can escape Azkaban if you're caught."  
  
Like _that_ would happen.  The plan was brilliant, _no one_ would suspect the good guys of pulling the same trick the bad guys did just two months ago.  But _Animagery_.  The sheer mayhem they could cause... it would be _glorious_.  
  
"And work on developing a poker face that isn't 'ooo, explosions'," Lupin added.  
  
"Whatever for?" the twins asked.  Fred added, "What would you think if we looked innocent and harmless?"  
  
"... Nevermind.  Two."  Lupin raised a second finger.  "Sirius is a fair hand at Potions."  He said it with such a straight face that it took a moment for the actual meaning to hit.  
  
George felt his lip wobble.  The genius.  The brilliance.  The sheer... utter... wondrous _audacity_.  If George was into older men he'd be having a very embarassing moment, he just knew it and did not care.  "We're not worthy," he breathed in chorus with Fred.  
  
Lupin just smiled innocently.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
The actual dosing was easy.  There was a new elf in the kitchens, some crazy little free one wearing about fifteen mismatched socks and a shirt proclaiming itself Mother's Little Helper.  
  
"Mr. Harry Potter sir's Wheezys!" it chirped with a uniquely powerful delight.  (Note to self: invent bottled delight.)  (Note to self: make sure it's non-addictive, George added.)  "How can Dobby bes helping yous?"  
  
And it was as simple as that.  
  
Lupin Flooed in to the Ghoul Studies' book cage with Snuffles, where the twins presented them with a dose each of Umbridge and Snape Polyjuice.  (Umbridge's was a worryingly old-pork shade of pink, and smelled like rotting roses with an undertone of incontinent cat.  Snape's looked like the weird rainbow sheen at the edges of dirty Muggle road puddles, sloshed inside the vial like the backwards-flowing edge of a Dementor's robes, and smelled like someone had vomited up the Potions cupboard.)  
  
Snuffles whined at the smell and shifted back.  "The things I do for a good prank," Sirius muttered, looking somewhat green around the gills.  
  
"Likewise," Lupin said.  Then he clinked his vial against Sirius'.  "Bottoms up, you big baby."  
  
At which point they discovered that Living Death did have a weird side effect with Polyjuice.  
  
Fred stared at the four living statues toppled over on the ground, his fingers twitching.  "... I didn't think to bring any Living Death antidote," he said.  
  
George elbowed him out of the way.  "Lucky for us all, I did."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
With Dobby's enthusiastic help, Lupinbridge and Sirius Snape must've managed to find and get into 'their' quarters easily enough.  Neither twin wanted to know where they were stashing the true professors -- best guess would be their wardrobes, or possibly under the beds, where all small children knew monsters belonged anyway.  
  
Knowing the professors were secretly different did not prepare them at _all_ for their next Defense class.  
  
"Good morning, children~" 'Umbridge' caroled merrily.  "Books out, wands away!"  
  
Fred and George exchanged a panicked look.  They'd given the antidote to the right statue... right?  
  
"I expect all of you have completed the reading?" she simpered.  "Excellent!" although no one had responded.  "Let's get started, then!"  She hit the board with her stumpy little wand, and chalk puffed into large, colorfully-filled-in lettering.  
  
SLINKHARD IS ENEMY BAIT: DISCUSS  
  
"If we catch all the salient points, we'll finish class with a nice marshmallow roast over the books," Umbridge announced to a stunned silence.  "If not... well, I think another chapter of reading might be necessary," she said with a certain threatening cheer.  
  
"Bloody hell," Lee blurted.  "What happened to you?!"  
  
Umbridge beamed at him.  "My personality transplant finally arrived!  Never order from companies that use seagulls instead of owls, children.  Their deliveries are never on time.  Now, who wants to be the first to tell me why Slinkhard is creature lunch?"  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
If Defense had been a shock, Potions...  
  
The classroom was somehow even more ominous than ever.  The desks had all been pushed to the sides of the room; a lone, empty cauldron large enough to bathe in sat at the exact center of the room, in a beam of dim, faintly blue-ish light.  There was no fire under its base.  Instead, a warm, iridescent mist swirled under its wrought-iron stand, tendrils licking at the curved pewter and giving off the impression that they might -- might -- just open a beady eye at their tips before dissipating into nothingness.  
  
The door slammed shut.  
  
In the deepest shadows at the side of the room, something moved.  Snape loomed into view, lowering his wand slowly with a dreadful expression upon his face, as though he was keeping the wand off them by sheer force of will.  
  
"It has been brought to my _attention_ ," he snarled in measured, deadly cadence, "that none of you have bothered to learn proper safety precautions for Potions."  
  
Try ' _never been taught!_ ', Fred thought hotly, forgetting for a second that it wasn't actually Snape.  (He hoped.)  _Damn_ Sirius was good.  
  
" _None_ of you!" Snape repeated.  "Seven. Years!"  His robes flared as he snapped around to glare at the other half of the room.  "And not _one_ student has demonstrated an interest in keeping your heads _upon your fool necks!_  
  
"No more."  Snape drew himself up even taller, voice dropping.  "If you refuse to learn by reading," he purred, "you will learn by _doing_."  
  
He slashed his wand at the Potions cabinets, and every door flew open with a sharp bang.  
  
"If you wish to not be _horribly disfigured_ by the end of class, and therefore remain capable of inflicting your hormones upon each other, I suggest you have your books and wands at the ready."  No one moved, frozen in shock.  " _Now!_ "


	2. Chapter 2

The first Sunday of Harry's eighth year, when dinner ended, older students corralled the first and second years, and the entirety of Gryffindor House swept off to their Tower.  By the time they reached the Fat Lady, most of the older students were ribbing each other and bouncing like the previous year hadn't happened.  The youngest students weren't, huddling together in bewilderment.  
  
Their bewilderment only increased as the entire House piled into the common room, crates of butterbeers appearing from somewhere and the bottles flying into various hands.  Between the staircases to the boys' and girls' dorms, an old Persian rug grew a base, creating a small stage; the portrait behind it slid to the side, revealing a dented copper cauldron with a badly-painted lion's face on it, and a board that floated out to hover as a makeshift podium off at one corner of the stage.  
  
Harry caught his own butterbeer, the glass bottle perfectly frosty in his hand, and raised it high with the rest of the cheering kids as Neville hopped up onto the stage.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen!" he called out, raising a red-bound scroll rather than a butterbeer.  "And all the rest of you lot in Gryffindor House!  Welcome to The First Essay!"  
  
The Tower rang with cheers.  
  
Neville waited for the noise to die down a bit.  "Calm down, calm down, you guys.  First, a moment of silence for me."  He raised his eyes to the ceiling, holding the scroll piously over his heart.  "Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant."  A pause.  "That's 'we who are about to die salute you', kids," he added kindly.  "For tonight's essay," he went on, "the First Essay of the year, the First Essay of TWO years, is... _The Roast of Hermione Granger!_ "  
  
" _Damn_ , Neville!"  
  
"You go, Neville!"  
  
"We'll drink to your memory, Neville!"  
  
Neville inclined his head graciously.  Then, "I stand before you," he intoned gravely. "Not the Vanquisher of Voldemort," was that a grin playing around Neville's mouth? "the Man Who Saved, the Chosen One, He Who Stood Tall And Unbowed Before The Greatest Evil Of Our Time," it WAS, and it broke out into mock outrage, "because somewhere in that mess of gaining ridiculous titles he developed some goddamn sense and is too chickenshit to roast Granger himself!"  
  
"Man's a bloody genius!" someone shouted amidst the rest of the cheering and laughing.  
  
"Ron, of course," Neville finished, "is just whipped."  
  
Harry couldn't help it.  "Is this essay about Hermione, or all three of us?" he called out.  "Because I'm great with being a chickenshit for a change."  
  
"I'm getting there, Harry, hold your horses!"  And Neville tossed the scroll at the podium, where it unfurled with a papery snap.  "Pay attention, firsties.  This is how to write an essay.  Paragraph one:  _It is a fact generally well-known that a magician's Sorting is the determiner of their lives, showing the traits most dominant to their personality and thus matching like with like.  The fact that Hermione Granger, most brilliant witch of her age, was Sorted promptly into Gryffindor and was not even a Hatstall should, were one to give a modicum of thought to it, terrify the heck out of any wizard with two brain cells to rub together_..."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Backing up a bit.  
  
Every House has their own internal traditions.  The secret grand prank of the Hufflepuff seventh years.  Slytherin's convoluted economic system, which resembles petty theft to the uneducated eye.  Ravenclaw's contraband library, with books ranging from porn to politics, Muggle and wizarding alike.  
  
And then there's Gryffindor House, who decided centuries ago that normal academics were _boring_.  
  
(That's the claim, anyway.  In truth, the practice only goes back to one Bilius Lionel Prewitt, who began his second year in 1924 with an epic composition on the virtues of the Brown twins, then entering their sixth year.  Violet Brown was not best pleased to be compared to her brother, "a layabout with more than enough empty space in his head for the Quidditch game that's always going on there".  Her opinion, not Bilius'.  
  
As Bilius was only really aware of how to write well in essay format, the tradition has been for essays.  Mostly.)  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
"GOOOOOOOOOD EVENING GRYFFINDORS!"  The 7th-year prefect, a girl whose tawny hair had glints that could be blonde or gray at the temples, had a funny spell on to make her voice carry over the entire, expanded common room and an entire House of rowdy well-fed teenagers.  "WELCOME BACK TO HOGWARTS!"  
  
The crowd roared so loudly that the table under Harry's fingertips buzzed.  He and Ron were squished with Neville on one of the more battered study desks off to one side of the newly-formed stage.  There weren't enough real seats for everyone; the largest couch had galloped off into the girls' dorm staircase, and nobody had really seemed to bother trying to drag it back down, so the first years were all stuffed in whatever corners they'd fit.  
  
(On the other side of the room, Granger towered over most of the room on top of a bookcase.  She looked fit to be tied, and had her shoes held carefully, awkwardly away from the books themselves.)  
  
"For those of you who don't know me, _firsties_ ," the prefect grinned, "or forgot who the heck I was, or were sleepwalking up from the Sorting Feast, I'm Lindsey Wolfe!  And thiiiiiis iiiiis ESSAY PRACTICE!"  
  
What.  Harry glanced over under all the cheering, but Ron and Neville looked as completely lost and bewildered as he did.  
  
"Tonight's Essay," Harry could hear the capitalization in Lindsey's voice, "comes to us from our swottiest swot, our genius of grades, our eager summer volunteer... that most unfortunate soul whose name came out of the pot," she finished honestly, to considerable laughter, "Percyyyyy Weasleyyyyyy!"  
  
"Make us proud, Perce!" the Weasley twins yelled.  Percy frowned forbiddingly at them, to no effect.  
  
"Who here remembers the essay topic of the summer?" Lindsey asked.  More mass cheering.  "Wow, that many?  We never remember the topic!  Except for the poor schmuck who has to write it every summer, but I guess this year's topic was a memorable one!  But for the sake of the firsties, Percy, what was this year's First Essay Topic?"  
  
Percy stood, pulling a red-bound scroll from his robe pockets, and took Lindsey's place on the stage.  "Ahem."  He ceremoniously broke the wax seal, letting the ribbon fall, and tossed the scroll at the floating podium.  Then, without looking at it, he intoned, " _Why The Weasley Twins Deserve Everything That Is Coming To Them_."  
  
The tower itself seemed to shake under the force of the cheering this time.  The twins found higher chairs to stand on or something, and started shouting something Harry couldn't hear and dancing around in glee.  
  
Next to Harry, Ron shrugged.  "I dunno why they need an entire essay to explain that," he yelled into Harry's ear, so Harry could hear him.  
  
Eventually, eventually, the noise died down again, and the room's attention focused on Percy.  Percy simply stuck his nose slightly higher in the air, straightened up so much he looked like someone was trying to give him a wedgie, and once again didn't glance towards the essay scroll.  "Recited from memory," he announced pompously, recieving a shower of popcorn in reply, "because Merlin knows what the twins changed the essay to actually say.  I present to you, Gryffindor House, _Why The Weasley Twins Deserve Everything That Is Coming To Them_."  He cast a scathing look their way over the rims of his glasses.  " _Everything_."  
  
" _There are times in the course of human events_..."  
  
Harry looked at his butterbeer.  Well.  Never let it be said that Harry Potter wasted food.  Bottoms up!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Neville is in eighth year because he had too many days absent in seventh to take his NEWTs.  
> 2\. The essays are a Sunday night tradition, and the last Sunday of first term is another special: a commentary on the DADA teacher, unless it has to happen earlier as an Emergency Rough Draft.  
> Quirrel: He Wore A Raspberry Beret, The Kind That Smelled Like a Secondhand Store  
> Lockhart: Emergency Rough Draft: NEWT Girls Band Together (also somebody run interference for Harry Potter, the prof's creeping on his fame)  
> Remus: Weird Competence! What's the Catch?  
> Moody: Emergency Rough Draft: Band Together 2, Electric Boogaloo  
> Umbridge: The Author of Defensive Theory is an Addlepated Prat With The Brains of a Lemming  
> Snape: We Don't Need No Stinking Essay: A Compilation Of 7 Years Of Disaster Daydreams


End file.
